We are all too familiar with the stories. Someone who for his entire
life considered himself Jewish is suddenly told by a Rabbinical court
that his Jewish identity is suspect. A woman adopted and converted as a
child is informed that the conversion does not meet halachic standards.
Beyond the personal, conversion to Judaism has in recent years been a
painful and persistent issue confronting the Jewish world at large. It
has pitted Jew against Jew, threatened to weaken Israel-Diaspora
relations, caused synagogue and communal strife, and, most importantly,
has brought undeserved anguish upon sincere converts and their
offspring.

But a significant development, announced last week by the Rabbinical
Council of America and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, has the potential
to diminish the severity of these problems in several important
respects, while still maintaining reasonable halachic conversion
standards. In the process these two rabbinic entities have created a
model for reasoned cooperation, rather than rancor, in Jewish life.

I am referring to the announcement establishing a North American network
of standing regional rabbinical courts for conversion, under the
auspices of the Rabbinical Council of America, with the blessing, and
endorsement, of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

The network accomplishes multiple goals. First and foremost it ensures
that its converts will be assured that their status as Jews will not be
questioned in the future, whether in Israel or in other major mainstream
Orthodox communities. In addition it introduces long overdue
standardization and comprehensive record-keeping into the conversion
process. The courts follow clearly understood policies and practices.
Candidates for conversion will know what to expect and what will be
expected of them.

There is a reason that RCA rabbis have in overwhelming numbers welcomed
the network. It enables them to work in close cooperation with their
peers, free of undue pressures, but still allows them to cultivate
personal mentoring relationships with the candidates they sponsor. The
network has procedures in place to deal with special circumstances
including adoption, conversion motivated by marriage, already-married
couples or families with non-Jewish spouses and children. Following
conversion, integration of the converts will be facilitated in numerous
ways, including standardized documentation, comprehensive databases,
information-sharing, and follow-up.

There are some voices who argue that the network violates local rabbinic
independence. Or that it substitutes a bureaucracy for what has been a
close rabbinic-lay relationship. It has even been said that the new
standards impose unreasonable hardships on converts or that the network
is proof of weakness by the Modern Orthodox rabbinate.

Such fears, and conclusions, are misplaced.

Every candidate will have the benefit of his or her own rabbinic sponsor
as mentor throughout the process. Each court will be made up of
qualified local rabbis, many of whom have previously been supervising
conversions, but will now through the new network, be formally
recognized. What is different is that they will now be acting in
partnership with each other and with rabbinic authorities around the
Jewish world, and will moreover be able to function with some local
flexibility in implementation.

In any case an individual rabbi can still elect to do conversions
outside of the national network. Such conversions will not automatically
come with the endorsement of the RCA. But that is nothing new. The RCA
has not previously given blanket endorsements to the conversions of its
members.

As to the standards themselves, I believe that even a cursory review
will demonstrate that they echo the consensus of halachic requirements
for conversion. No more and no less. True there have been a few rabbinic
dissenters in the past as in the present, advocating different halachic
conversion criteria. But the overwhelming rabbinic perspective has
required, as does the network, genuine commitment to Shabbat, Yomtov,
Kashrut, sustained Jewish education of children, and certain fundamental
affirmations of faith and practice. Claims by some outspoken critics
that these are extraneous or recent stringencies are incorrect. Worse
yet, such critics are publicly undermining a long overdue and eminently
reasonable solution that would facilitate the acceptance of such
converts into the Jewish people and faith. What reasonable alternative
do they propose that will assure converts wide-ranging acceptance for
themselves and their children?

As guardians of tradition in a time of societal change, Orthodox rabbis
are by nature and training surely cautious when it comes to innovations.
Yet the overwhelming majority of RCA rabbis and many outside of it have
enthusiastically welcomed the creation of a new network, consisting of
new as well as established rabbinical courts, new working relationships,
utilizing new technologies and new global partnerships.

Why? Because they know that what we have before us is a timely
opportunity to foster constructive change that will bring resolution to
a festering communal challenge as well as peace of mind to converts and
their families. It will hopefully benefit the Jewish people in a manner
that is fully in accord with what is both rooted in antiquity and
timeless, namely, our sacred Torah and the dynamism of Jewish law.

I certainly hope that these developments will be embraced by the Jewish
community with the enthusiasm we feel, and the support that our singular
people, and its precious converts, deserve.